State Dept Deficient in Hard Language Experts

As s former FSO who studied Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute [when it was located in Beirut; it is now in Tunis], I read in the Washington Post that "plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose." Here is one money quote:

Languages described as "superhard" by the report are proving particularly difficult. Four out of 10 workers in posts requiring Arabic, Chinese and Japanese fail to meet the requirements.

The levels are even higher in some critical postings. Sixty percent of State Department personnel in Sanaa, Yemen, and 59 percent in Cairo do not meet language requirements, the report said.

The State Dept has a rotten history with languages. I was the subject of a deliberate prevarication by the State Dept Personnel Dept, where a subterranean creature named Lanpher promised 18 months of Arabic language. When I got to Beirut, it had evaporated to eight months, not nearly enough time to master a language which made Vietnamese, which is nearly as hard as Chinese and which I studied at the VTC, seem simple in comparison. I still managed to get a 3-plus speaking, 4-reading in Arabic, [out of 5/5], which was judged exceptional for such a "short" period.

But State has never made foreign language skills a priority on its various career paths. I can remember that Joe Sisco and many other Asst. SecStates for the Middle East prided themselves on not speaking Arabic or Hebrew, claiming this gave them "objectivity." Admirals who never went to sea, like Sisco, who never served abroad, shot to the top because of marrying rich and social connections. Language study took away from time in the field or at the home office, where promotions were easier and faster.

In addition, the State Dept's object lesson of all time on the status of language and local skills occurred in Baghdad in 2003, when Gen Garner, himself a three-star Arabist, and his top-flight team of State Dept Arabists were jettisoned after a couple of weeks for Pentagon favorite L. Paul Bremer, whose overseas State experience had been in Norway and the Netherlands.

The State Team was headed by some former colleagues of mine and had perhaps a hundred years of experience dealing with the specifics of the region. Bremer had zero, but was a trusty of Rumsfeld and Cheney. So much for local expertise.

Perhaps the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq was doomed from the get-go, but the massive and wilful ignorance of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the neo-con anvil chorus ensured the eventual ascendancy of local Iraqi fissiparous tendencies. Aggressive incompetence by the Pentagon continues to this day, and so does the peripheral role of State, even with a great Ambassador like Zalmay Khalilizad [himself coherent in Dari, Farsi, Arabic, English, and perhaps other languages].

Finally, the language situation will never be resolved unless and until special incentives are offered for straining one's brain for two years learning a language as devilishly hard as Arabic [which in its Modern Written Arabic and TV speak is a sort of proto-language rather than a patois used by anybody in their local environment.] Arabic dialects are nearly as far apart from each other as, say, Portuguese is from Romanian, to use the Romance Language equivalent. No cabbie in Baghdad could understand a taxi driver in, say, Rabat or Algiers---North Africa has virtually a separate dialectical language, as does Egypt. [Though Egyptian and Lebanese dialects are understood passively to a great extent throughout the Arab World due to their thriving movie industries.]

So even though he may be off on his politics, one observer makes sense when he avers:

"It confirms my impressions from my time meeting with U.S. diplomats," said Anatol Lieven, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. "The language skills are poor, and often they are very cut off from the local population."
"Somebody who is willing to make a career in the war on terror and spend their whole career working in or about Muslim countries should be permanently on a different rate of pay,"

However, State's tradition of pay-to-play ambassadorships and culture of socialite insouciance will not easily accept grinders who specialize in low-life suicide wannabes and listening to intercepts. Perhaps it would be better to farm the anti-terrorism gig out to a serious agency, like the CIA or NSA were until recent times.